Five
by Alex Foster
Summary: After Oliver, Lois learns there are five steps to getting over someone. Unfortunately for her they all seem to go through Clark Kent


Title: Five

Author: Alex Foster

Category: General

Rating: PG-13

Setting: Late in season six

Summary: After Oliver, Lois learns there are five steps to getting over someone. Unfortunately for her they all seem to go through Clark Kent

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the WB and DC comics. No money is being made and no infringement is intended.

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**Denial**

Even as she pulled out of the liquor store's parking lot onto route 80, Lois pretended she didn't know where she was going. Almost of its own will her car moved down the dark road to the Kent farm at her customary twenty miles per hour over the speed limit.

It was just a habit that drew her down the long driveway. She would check in with Martha about the following day's agenda before going home alone. At the gate she remembered that Mrs. Kent was in Metropolis meeting with fundraisers for her U.S. Senate campaign. Clark was the only one at the farm now.

But she was already closer to the house than the road so she continued up the driveway. She'd just drop in and bug him before returning home. For all his simple, farm raised, thick headedness Clark could hold his own when it came to verbal sparring. There were times when they were going at each other word for word and Lois actually found herself flushed with excitement. From arguing. With him. How messed up was that?

Not even bothering with the darkened house, Lois walked the familiar path to the barn. In her hand she held a bunched up paper bag, the object inside had recently become an offering of sorts between them. At times she wondered what would happen if she never showed up on these Saturday nights. Never paid him these visits. Would he, she wondered, find her at the Talon with a bag from the liquor store in his hand?

Probably not, she knew. Chloe was there and Lois couldn't imagine Clark the hayseed in a liquor store. Plus then they would both have to admit their evenings didn't just happen because she was in the neighborhood. There was planning that neither wanted to acknowledge.

Up the old stairs she found him at the desk, glossy photos of craters spread out before him. He looked awful and worn out. Dark circles under his eyes spoke of long hours studying by lamplight and running the farm. Lois wasn't sure how he managed to single handedly run an entire farm and still lose himself every night in those pictures with Queen Industries stamped on the header.

She glanced away from the name before the twinge of pain could settle in her stomach.

"You look like shit, Smallville." Lois helped herself to a seat on his sofa and pulled a bottle of single malt antiseptic from the bag. "I have just what you need."

Clark turned in his chair and looked at her with raised eyebrows. "I don't think that will do me much good."

Lois found the two shot glasses she brought the first time (or did he already have them? She'd had a few by that time and couldn't remember), and filled them. "Certainly can't hurt," she said.

That was a mantra she repeated hoping it was true of what they were doing.

**Anger**

Clark could really piss her off. He would do something and seem completely ignorant of how much it bugged her, but he must always know. A man couldn't be that annoying to one person without even trying. Lois imagined him sometimes up in his barnyard man-clubhouse just listing ways he could bother her. Then she would realize she was wasting time thinking about him and that would annoy her even more.

Oliver never came close to picking at her the way Clark did. He would barge right through decisions and arguments with a sure-footed assurance that he was right, made worse by the fact he usually was. No, Oliver never really sparked a fiery reaction from her...he just went right to hurting her.

At the start of these meetings, as she and Clark sat in the loft doing shots, Lois would sometimes talk about those in the past that had inflicted that kind of hurt. She had a near photographic memory for the guys in her past (Ollie would have said eidetic, in his prissy way), but before she was always the one to leave first. She liked it better when she did the inflicting.

He would just nod in that dopey Clark Kent way and listen to her as she poured her heart out. She told herself the only reason she did that was because of the alcohol and since Clark had just as much as she did he probably wouldn't remember any of her secrets.

But as she slowly sank to the bottom of the bottle, feeling every sip of it, Clark never seemed drunk. Not even a little. They would do shot after shot, every drinking game she could think of (and there were many), but she could never get him wasted. Human beings did not have constitution like that. Lois Lane, daughter of General Sam Lane, the woman that could literally drink sailors under the table met her drinking match in a stupid farm boy from Kansas.

Her match was supposed to be in handsome billionaires with fancy toys, not Clark Kent.

That more than anything made Lois angry.

**Depression**

Early on Lois came to the conclusion that men did not want a woman intelligent and self reliant enough to take care of herself. All men, in her opinion, had a savior complex that did not allow for a person like herself. Lucy mastered the skill of hiding her strengths in order to find what she needed, but Lois could never do that.

So because of that cruel fact, Lois found herself every Saturday night with nothing better to do than spend time with the only other person more pathetically lovelorn than herself. In addition to those crater pictures Clark found so interesting, she knew there were still plenty of photos of Lana stashed around the loft.

Maybe driven women were just doomed? It wasn't as though she needed someone in her life. Lanes could get along just fine solo. Plus, she could see in Clark what loving someone did to a person. He allowed Lana to eat him from the inside out. Luckily Oliver never got that close to her.

Nope, he never did. So why wasn't she happier about that?

**Bargaining**

Whitesnake once said, "If you ever leave, or deceive, or fool around, you could be right, you could be wrong, but I know I'll miss you when you're gone." Thanks to Oliver Queen that's a song she won't be able to listen to for a while. Better she not even look at the name.

After Lana married Lex, Lois decided a little late night drinking party might be just the thing for two brokenhearted souls. It wasn't some weird lipstick induced thing...just two friends having a drink. When she started thinking of Clark as a friend, she wasn't quite sure. But for all of his faults, he was a nice guy that figured out her buttons and knew when and when not to press them.

She had envisioned Clark blotto after one shot going on about Lana and true love with pink stickers and hearts inside schoolbooks. Instead she did eight and found herself talking about Oliver. Lois was not, and never wanted to become, one of those drunks that went on about past guys.

Clark found a way to save her from that. "How about," he said handing her shot number nine, "we have some rules. No more talking about Oliver."

"Or Lana."

That dopey grin came back and he just shrugged. In that moment Lois would have given anything if Clark were just a little more drunk.

**Acceptance**

There were, she decided as they divided up the last shot, worst things in life. Hangovers the morning after were a bitch, but there was something comforting about these secret weekly rituals with Clark. A sober mind would tell her that it was simply a pressure release valve for all the rough emotions of the past year, but her drunk mind couldn't see much beyond Clark's strong and reassuring presence when he told her she was unfit to drive.

"You can take the couch tonight," he said.

"This one?" Lois stretched comfortably out on the loft's worn sofa.

"It might get a little cold out here," he said. "Let's try the one inside."

He offered her a hand up and Lois tried to use it to pull him down beside her. She might as well tried pushing the farmhouse off its foundation. How much did he weigh anyway? Showing no sign of effort, Clark lifted her and steadied her when she threatened to sway.

It was a cold early morning, but he was like a furnace bleeding out wave after wave of heat. She slipped an arm under his coat as he helped her down the stairs.

The coziness of the farmhouse closed in around her as consciousness started to slip away. Years of togetherness from an honest to God family that got it all right filled every corner of the house. Keeping with the ritual, Clark bypassed the couch and guided her to his room. Somewhere between the barn and the main house Kansas ethics kicked in and he decided the couch was his and the bed hers.

Grumbling to himself, Clark set her unceremoniously on the bed. "We need to stop this," he said. "It's not healthy." He pulled her shoes off and left them on the floor.

Feigning sleep, Lois settled into the familiar bedsheets. His scent of nonjudgmental acceptance surrounded her. Needing to do this, she knew, wasn't wrong. They both got to pretend, hiding behind shots, and found a sort of balance with each other. She couldn't figure it out, and, for one night a week really didn't want to.

**End**


End file.
